The wine-ings of an anglophone francophile in the shade of the city of light.

Friday, January 09, 2009

Hong Kong Adventure

I just got back from a truly fabulous week in Hong Kong. I was visiting Lola (not her real name), lovely Lola who has been I would say my best friend for the last ten years at least. We went to university together, we went to Paris at more or less the same time, and we are both ex-patriates (although not in the rather nice financial sense of the word), living in foreign countries, inadvertently distancing ourselves further and further from our homeland as time goes by.

Lola has been in HK for two years now, and seems to be very happy there. She has a full circle of friends, a gorgeous apartment with a fantastic view and an energetic lifestyle (BBC aside).

The city of Hong Kong is unlike any other I have ever visited. I had never even set foot in Asia before. The first thing that struck me was the Chinese symbols everywhere, totally incomprehensible to me. I thought about the Chinese who visit Europe with no idea of our alphabet, it must be practically impossible to decipher anything. If I had been left to the Chinese symbols I would still be in the arrivals hall today.

Hong Kong is a city of wonders. There is the breathtaking Manhattan-style skyline, the traditional Chinese restaurants with indecipherable menus, the swarms of people everywhere, and the enormous variety of smells that hit you on every corner. Dim-sum being prepared for brunch, noodles cooking in enormous pots for lunch, and succulent roasted duck. But it's not all Chinese food, Hong Kong has a huge choice of restaurants, and while I was there I sampled Japanese, Italian, Indian and of course Chinese.

The highlight of the stay for me was dinner at Aqua; a restaurant and bar on the 30th floor of a Kowloon office building, looking right onto Hong Kong island. The view is simply stunning and I couldn't take my eyes off it for the first twenty minutes of being there.

More on bargaining in Shenzhen, eyelash extensions, winning at the races and expeditions to other parts of the island coming soon...